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Vanguard is having growing pains in the form of customer service due to its explosive growth. Fidelity and Charles Schwab though are also low cost and highly rated. Vanguard now offers personal advisory services for a 0.3% fee. Fidelity and Schwab look to be more money (Fidelity 0.6-1.7%) Schwab (0.7-0.9%).
Vanguard's customer service issues were very obvious. I would call, get put on hold, then get passed around to different people, none of whom could answer my question. I know Vanguard is very popular right now and they are promoted on lots of investing websites. But I felt insecure with my money in their hands.
I wonder if there is way to privately pay someone for investment advice, just on a per hour basis, to sit down and talk.
Vanguard's customer service issues were very obvious. I would call, get put on hold, then get passed around to different people, none of whom could answer my question. I know Vanguard is very popular right now and they are promoted on lots of investing websites. But I felt insecure with my money in their hands.
I wonder if there is way to privately pay someone for investment advice, just on a per hour basis, to sit down and talk.
There are plenty of fee based advisers that could work with you. Unless you are an active investor making frequent trades you just need someone to design a portfolio consistent with your goals, tax situation, and risk tolerance. That is probably a lot cheaper than paying >1% per year or going to a salesmen that will sell you funds based on his commissions. You are probably talking about $200-300 for a session. If you don't like Vanguard I'd pick Schwab or Fidelity.
I wonder if there is way to privately pay someone for investment advice, just on a per hour basis, to sit down and talk.
You can absolutely do that. The hard part is finding a GOOD financial advisor to work with. The overwhelming majority are commissioned salespeople masquerading as advisors.
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Given your desire for some hand-holding, though, I'd recommend taking a good, long look at Fidelity and Charles Schwab. If either of those firms have physical branches in your town, there's your answer.
Also, remember, you can "sit down and talk" here. The advice may be confusing, but at least you know none of us are making any money off of you when we give it!
You might be a good candidate for one of the Robo-advisors like Betterment, Wealthfront, or Personal Capital. You pay a far smaller admin fee than the crooks at EJ will charge you, and they select a mix of low cost index funds based on your age/risk profile. You might not make ridiculously large gains, but you'll mostly track the market, and the fees won't eat your lunch and kick your dog the way EJ will...
You can absolutely do that. The hard part is finding a GOOD financial advisor to work with. The overwhelming majority are commissioned salespeople masquerading as advisors.
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That's what I'm finding out also with "investment seminars" that come into my area. They often have ulterior motives.
I might consider moving my IRA back to Vanguard next year. In the meantime, should I just tell the EJ Advisor not to put me into loaded mutual funds, and see if he can put me in S&P 500 Index, like I had with Vanguard. I'm wary of loaded mutual funds, it seems they benefit the companies more than the individual investor.
Does EJ even offer no-load mutual funds? I think they do but they likely don't make commission on them, so they don't advertise them.
Is it really hard to get your money out of EJ's grubby little hands?
If it is not, you may want to switch to Schwab or Fidelity as someone suggested upthread.
Both have physical offices. You can drop in just to open the account and chat with them.
Schwab has robo-advisors, IIRC .32%/year, comparable to Vanguard's robo-advisors.
Or you can decide your own risk/rewards tolerance and allocate, for example, 30% to bonds and 70% to stocks. Buy broad ETFs with low expense ratios, like SCHZ/SCHB/SCHF from Schwab or AGG/ITOT/IDEV from Fidelity (these and 67 other iShares ETFs are commission free at Fidelity); or the equivalent mutual funds. Avoid narrow sector-based or industry-based ETFs.
The good thing is that there is NO wrong answer. A lot of your performance will depend on markets and allocation, not your own stock-picking skills or reading tea-leaves about market direction or which sector will perform the best. Once you decide on allocation, be a fatalist and accept whatever results you get. (I am joking about being a fatalist, but only a little.)
Is it really hard to get your money out of EJ's grubby little hands?
If it is not, you may want to switch to Schwab or Fidelity as someone suggested upthread.
Both have physical offices. You can drop in just to open the account and chat with them.
Schwab has robo-advisors, IIRC .32%/year, comparable to Vanguard's robo-advisors.
Or you can decide your own risk/rewards tolerance and allocate, for example, 30% to bonds and 70% to stocks. Buy broad ETFs with low expense ratios, like SCHZ/SCHB/SCHF from Schwab or AGG/ITOT/IDEV from Fidelity (these and 67 other iShares ETFs are commission free at Fidelity); or the equivalent mutual funds. Avoid narrow sector-based or industry-based ETFs.
The good thing is that there is NO wrong answer. A lot of your performance will depend on markets and allocation, not your own stock-picking skills or reading tea-leaves about market direction or which sector will perform the best. Once you decide on allocation, be a fatalist and accept whatever results you get. (I am joking about being a fatalist, but only a little.)
There actually are wrong answers in this business and having an advisor may or may not prevent you from making those wrong turns. The Schwab funds for instance are terribly tax inefficient iirc so expense ratio isn't the only thing that matters. Also going it alone might seem cheaper on the surface but what you don't know, you don't know and it can cost you more than you could imagine
Apparently I have invested differently than most here on CD. I buy individual stocks, usually in 100 share lots, but sometimes 50 shares. I have done well by sticking with large cap stocks for over 20 years (Microsoft, Apple, United Healthcare, MacDonalds, Walmart, Cisco, etc ) and made money on all of them.
If the PE ratio gets too high, for me usually above 30, I sell. I never sell short though, for tax reasons. As opposed to others, I like dividend stocks. I take the dividends into my cash account and usually let them collect in there until I am ready to buy something. No tax on dividends. I usually only hold 10-12 different stocks at once; that's enough to keep an eye on.
Occasionally I have held individual corporate bonds, but I never buy bond funds.
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